All posts tagged: interface

Google Maps Gets Chatty With a New Gemini-Powered Interface

Google Maps Gets Chatty With a New Gemini-Powered Interface

Published by skeptic

There’s a new button in Google Maps: “Ask Maps.” Google started rolling out this new generative AI feature today, a conversational, in-app tool that combines data from Maps with a user experience similar to the company’s Gemini chatbot. It’s designed to answer questions about locations and schedule routes in the navigation app. This is part of Google’s overall strategy of adding Gemini to all its products. (Like that Portlandia sketch where the duo visits a boutique and puts bird decals on everything in sight.) Earlier this week, Google added Gemini-powered tools to its Workspace suite, including Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. And weeks before, it debuted a way for Gemini to take control of select apps to run tasks, like booking an Uber. Ask Maps is first coming to Google Maps users in the US and India. This launch is limited to mobile devices, available on both Android and iOS, with a desktop version expected in the near future. You can’t opt out of Ask Maps or hide it, just like many of the new …

Chinese brain interface startup Gestala raises M just two months after launch

Chinese brain interface startup Gestala raises $21M just two months after launch

Published by skeptic

Elon Musk’s Neuralink and OpenAI-backed Merge Labs are pushing forward with brain–computer interface (BCI) technology in the U.S. Meanwhile, Chinese serial entrepreneur Phoenix Peng is building rival efforts through two startups: NeuroXess, which develops implantable BCI systems, and a second company, Gestala, developing non-invasive ultrasound-based BCIs. Gestala has raised $21.6 million (CN¥150 million) just two months after launching, at a valuation of $100 million to $200 million, founder and CEO Phoenix Peng told TechCrunch. The round, co-led by Guosheng Capital and Dalton Venture with participation from Tsing Song Capital, Gobi Ventures, Fourier Intelligence, Liepin and Seas Capital, was heavily oversubscribed, with investor commitments totaling more than $58 million, Peng added. This is the largest early-stage funding in China’s BCI industry. Peng will use the money towards R&D, expanding the team from 15 to about 35 employees by year-end, and building a manufacturing facility in China. The three-month-old startup aims to complete its first-generation prototype by the end of the year. The global BCI industry is currently experiencing an investment surge in ultrasound technology. Gestala is …

Google Workspace CLI brings Gmail, Docs, Sheets and more into a common interface for AI agents

Google Workspace CLI brings Gmail, Docs, Sheets and more into a common interface for AI agents

Published by skeptic

What’s old is new: the command line — the original, clunky non-graphical interface for interacting with and controlling PCs, where the user just typed in raw commands in code — has become one of the most important interfaces in agentic AI. That shift has been driven in part by the rise of coding-native tools such as Claude Code and Kilo CLI, which have helped establish a model where AI agents do not just answer questions in chat windows but execute real tasks through a shared, scriptable interface already familiar to developers — and which can still be found on virtually all PCs. For developers, the appeal is practical: the CLI is inspectable, composable and easier to control than a patchwork of custom app integrations. Now, Google Workspace — the umbrella term for Google’s suite of enterprise cloud apps including Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Docs, Chat, Admin — is moving into that pattern with a new CLI that lets them access these applications and the data within them directly, without relying on third-party connectors. The project, …

Shure’s MVX2U Gen 2 interface transforms XLR mics into travel-friendly, high-fidelity USB-C audio solutions

Shure’s MVX2U Gen 2 interface transforms XLR mics into travel-friendly, high-fidelity USB-C audio solutions

Published by Jenni Sidey

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more › Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. For nearly a century, Shure microphones have shown true grit. Sometimes it’s capturing the grit of performers on stage. Sometimes it’s capturing the grit of the stage. All those (in)famous Roger Daltrey microphone twirls? A Shure SM58/Beta 58A. Point being, Shure microphones have graced dive bars to broadcast studios to presidential podiums, bringing reliability. But some recording/streaming setups have shrunk from rackmounts and road crews to backpacks and even back pockets, so Shure addressed how to bring a full-bodied XLR microphone into a USB-C world without sacrificing depth or clarity or durability. The second-generation single-channel Shure MVX2U is a compact, road-ready $139 digital audio interface that runs inline between your mic and laptop, tablet, or phone, drawing clean bus power from your device to deliver rich, broadcast-grade audio minus the breakout boxes. See It Despite its pocketable 100g build, this MVX2U Gen. 2 is no …

China’s brain-computer interface industry is racing ahead

China’s brain-computer interface industry is racing ahead

Published by skeptic

While Elon Musk’s Neuralink likes to say it’s “pioneering” brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), China’s BCI industry is already quietly moving from research to scale. A new wave of startups is racing to commercialize both implantable and noninvasive BCIs, backed by stronger policy support, expanding clinical trials, and growing investor interest. So says Phoenix Peng, who has founded not one, but two BCI startups. He’s a co-founder of NeuroXess, maker of BCI implants, as well as founder and CEO of noninvasive ultrasound BCI startup Gestala. His belief in the potential of this market is founded on concrete action: Provinces such as Sichuan, Hubei, and Zhejiang have already set medical service pricing for BCI, speeding its inclusion in the national medical insurance system. Over time, he foresees the technology extending beyond medicine “treating disease” to “human augmentation,” he said. “I have always maintained that neuroscience and AI are two sides of the same coin. They are destined for deep integration, realizing direct high-bandwidth connections between the human brain and AI. BCI will serve as the ultimate bridge between …

The enterprise AI land grab is on. Glean is building the layer beneath the interface.

The enterprise AI land grab is on. Glean is building the layer beneath the interface.

Published by skeptic

The battle for enterprise AI is heating up. Microsoft is bundling Copilot into Office. Google is pushing Gemini into Workspace. OpenAI and Anthropic are selling directly to enterprises. Every SaaS vendor now ships an AI assistant.  In the scramble for the interface, Glean is betting on something less visible: becoming the intelligence layer beneath it.  Seven years ago, Glean set out to be the Google for enterprise — an AI-powered search tool designed to index and search across a company’s SaaS tool library, from Slack to Jira, Google Drive to Salesforce. Today, the company’s strategy has shifted from building a better enterprise chatbot to becoming the connective tissue between models and enterprise systems. “The layer we built initially – a good search product – required us to deeply understand people and how they work and what their preferences are,” Jain told TechCrunch on last week’s episode of Equity, which we recorded at Web Summit Qatar. “All of that is now becoming foundational in terms of building high quality agents.” He says that while large language …

Breakthrough Brain-Computer Interface Is Minimally Invasive

Breakthrough Brain-Computer Interface Is Minimally Invasive

Published by Jenni Sidey

An important milestone has been achieved in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. A new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering shows how a high-performance brain-computer interface can be rapidly implanted through a minimally invasive procedure. “We have demonstrated that the entire surgical procedure for cranial micro-slit insertion, from initial skin incision to endoscope-guided array placement and final securing of the array positions, can be safely performed in under 20 minutes,” wrote corresponding author Benjamin Rapoport, MD, PhD, along with his team of neuroscientists at Precision Neuroscience. Rapoport is a brain-computer interface pioneer, neurosurgeon, engineer, and one of the original eight Neuralink employees who co-founded Elon Musk’s BCI startup in 2016. Rapoport left Neuralink two years later. He is currently the Chief Science Officer of Precision Neuroscience who co-founded the company in 2021 along with Michael Mager and others, including former Neuralink employees. Brain Computer Interfaces: Mind-Reading Tech Brain computer interfaces are potentially life-changing technology that enable users to control external devices to perform daily tasks such as moving wheelchairs and robotic limbs, exoskeletons, synthesized speech, communications, …

ChatGPT’s voice mode is no longer a separate interface

ChatGPT’s voice mode is no longer a separate interface

Published by skeptic

ChatGPT’s voice mode is getting more usable. OpenAI announced on Tuesday it is updating the user interface to its popular AI chatbot so users can access ChatGPT Voice right inside their chat, instead of having to switch to a separate mode. That means you’ll be able to converse with the chatbot and view its responses, including things like shared images, as you talk. Before, you’d be taken to a separate screen where you’d interact with an animated blue circle that represented the interface for ChatGPT’s voice. That screen also had a mute button and an option to record live video, as well as an X to return to the default text-based mode. During these prior conversations, you could only listen to what ChatGPT was saying, instead of seeing it on the screen. That could be annoying if you missed a response, as you’d have to leave the separate voice mode to see the response as text. You can now use ChatGPT Voice right inside chat—no separate mode needed. You can talk, watch answers appear, review …